City of Pirates is a 1983 French surrealist fantasy film directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. Made during Ruiz's most prolific period of filmmaking in exile and shortly after his first return to Chile since the 1973 military coup, the film stars a primarily French cast including Hugues Quester, Anne Alvaro and Melvil Poupaud. It was filmed in Portugal over a period of three weeks.

Plot

City of Pirates follows a disconsolate young woman called Isidore through multiple episodes of seemingly disconnected events and narrative points that, in themselves, operate with an allegorical and dreamlike logic. The film begins with the text-card stating "Overseas Territories, one week before the end of the war", something that is not referred to again in the film. The "pirates" and "city" of the title do not appear. This initiates a common theme in which narrative events are set up and never fully followed through to a traditional conclusion. Isidore initially works for her "father" and "mother" who give her commands and boss her around like a maid. Having considered suicide, she encounters a number of different characters, most notably a psychopathic young boy named Malo, who claims to have raped and murdered his own family and subsequently proposes to Isidore, and a social outcast named Toby who spends his time in a castle on an abandoned island, arguing with the internal voices of his mother, sister, and a number of members of his extended family.